During the last years “Accounting for Diversity” has become a trendy concept, around which the research interest of scholars and the reports published by of the top rated accounting firms have been increasingly evolving. In this paper, the term “Accounting for Diversity” has been addressed within the societal context of the stakeholder concept, in attempt to explore how the Swedish listed companies account for and communicate the demographic diversity of their society constituents in their disclosure means. In order to achieve this purpose, a quantitative approach has been conducted using a content analysis of the disclosed pictures, drawings and symbols in the annual reports and websites of the companies listed on the Swedish Stock Exchange (Nasdaq Stockholm). The data collected was then statistically analysed through a two-step cluster analysis. The empirical results show a preference for companies to use pictures in disclosing demographic attributes and diversity rather than symbols and drawings. Moreover, companies were found to prefer using their annual reports in disclosing the demographic diversity than their websites. Furthermore and regarding the companies’ behaviour in disclosing demographic diversity; large companies, belonging to high sensitive industries, were found to disclose higher levels of demographic diversity in their disclosure means, than the other small ones belonging to less sensitive industries. The results also show that companies belonging to different industries tend to mostly follow a convergent behaviour in accounting for diversity. Thus, it has been concluded that; the companies’ size seems to play a significant role in diverging and converging the companies’ behaviour in accounting for the demographic diversity in their disclosure means, while industry was not found to play a significantly salient role in that.

The use of multimodal communication by one moderately mentally retarded, nonphysically impaired teenage girl was investigated. Eighty minutes of language samples were transcribed, coded, and analysed for modes of communication, communicative intent, discourse function, and context of conversation. It was found that six different modes of communication, and various combinations of these modes, were used throughout the samples. A strong relationship between mode of communication and communicative Intent was found. Furthermore, the context of conversation influenced the mode of communication. No strong relationship was found, however, between discourse function and mode of communication. Implications of this research for a theory of multimodal communication in the nonverbal, as well as suggestions for clinical intervention with this population, are discussed. / Medicine, Faculty of / Audiology and Speech Sciences, School of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph. D. (Science)) -- University of Limpopo, 2015 / The objectives of the study were to examine the demographic profile and causes of death of people dying in a hospital and community; and to determine mortality rates, specifically age- and gender-specific mortality rates in a community. The study also compared causes of death assigned to hospital records with causes of death obtained from verbal autopsy reports. Methodology The data used in this thesis were collected in two phases. The first phase involved a retrospective review of all deaths that occurred in the Pietersburg/Mankweng Hospital Complex from 1st January, 2011 to 31st December, 2012. The second phase involved a community-based study using a verbal autopsyto determine cause of death in Dikgale HDSS for the same period. Results A total of 5402 deaths were reported in the hospital and 625 in the community. The majority of deaths in the hospital involved adults in the 15 to 49 year old age group, while in the community more deaths were recorded amongst adults aged 15 to 49 years of age and those in the 65+ year old age group. There were more male deaths in the hospital, while in the community a higher proportion of deaths occurred amongst females. v In children less than1 year old, the cause of death in the hospital was predominantly due to perinatal conditions, particularly preterm birth, low birth weight and birth asphyxia; while in the community, of the 5 deaths in this age group, infectious diseases were recorded as the main cause of death. Amongst children in the 1 to 4 year old age groups causes of hospital deaths were dominated by infectious diseases, injuries and malnutrition; while in the community infectious diseases were the main cause of death. Stillbirths were noted in the hospital with a stillbirth rate of 29.1/1000 deliveries. In the community no stillbirths were reported. More than half of the stillbirths were caused by unexplained intrauterine foetal causes followed by maternal hypertension in pregnancy and placenta abruption. For adults in the 15 to 49 year old age groups infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, were the leading causes of death in both the hospital and in the community. The proportion of deaths due to HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis was significantly greater in the community than in the hospital. Amongst adults in the 50+year old age group non-communicable diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases and cancers were the most common causes of death. In this age group, the hospital recorded more cancer deaths than did the community; while the community recorded more cardiovascular deaths than did the hospital. vi The overall mortality rate in the community was 8.4 deaths per 1000 person-year, with more deaths occurring amongst males (8.9 deaths per 1000 person-year). The mortality rate was high amongst adults in the 65+ year old age group (48.9 deaths per 1000 person-year). When comparing cause-specific mortality between hospital cause of death notification forms and cause of death determined by verbal autopsy reviews, the same top five underlying causes of death were observed, namely: cardiovascular diseases, infectious diseases, diabetes mellitus, malignant neoplasms and respiratory infections. The agreement between causes of death reported on cause of death notification forms and cause of death as a result of a verbal autopsywas 48%. For individual causes, agreement of more than 80% was achieved between cause of death recorded on cause of death notification forms and from verbal autopsy reviews for respiratory infections, diabetes, malignancies and injuries. Infectious diseases (68.5%) and cardiovascular diseases (74.1%) achieved the lowest agreement. In other words, in only 68.5% and 74.1% respectively was the cause of death as recorded on the “cause of death notification” forms the same as the cause of death when reviewed verbally. Furthermore, 13 deaths were recorded as being due to cardiovascular diseases on the “cause of death notification” forms, however, in only 5 of these cases was the cause of death recorded as the same in the verbal autopsy report. In 21 cases cause of death was attributed to infectious diseases on the cause of death notification form, vii while in only 13 of these cases was the cause of death similarly ascribed after verbal autopsy review. Conclusion This study showed that the verbal autopsy instrument has the potential to identify causes of death in a population where deaths occur outside of health facilities. Procedures for death certification and coding of underlying causes of death need to be streamlined in order to improve the reliability of registration data. This will be achieved if medical students and trainee specialists are trained in the completion of cause of death notification forms. Foetal autopsies should be introduced at tertiary hospitals to determine the causes of stillbirths.Antenatal care education for pregnant women should be encouraged because the level of antenatal care has an influence on the health of mothers and their newborns. The government should continue to focus on improving the socio-economic status of the population, while adequate foetal monitoring by health workers may reduce neonatal deaths resulting from preterm births, low birth weight and birth asphyxia. Innovative injury prevention strategies, interventions to control infectious diseases, cancer screening and lifestyle program may reduce adult mortality.

In hyperscale data center operations, automation is applied in many ways as it is becomes very hard to scale otherwise. There are however areas relating to understanding, grouping and diagnosing of error reports that are done manually at Facebook today. This master's thesis investigates solutions for applying unsupervised clustering methods to server error reports, server properties and historical data to speed up and enhance the process of finding and root causing systematic issues. By utilizing data representations that can embed both key-value data and historical event log data, the thesis shows that clustering algorithms together with data representations that capture syntactic and semantic structures in the data can be applied with good results in a real-world scenario.

In der Anthologie 'Mein Herz blieb in Afrika' werden über 25 Missionsberichte aus Grönland, Nordamerika, Westindien, Südamerika und Südafrika präsentiert, die zwischen 1817 und 1832 im zentralen Periodikum der Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine erschienen sind. Sie öffnen zum einen im Vergleich zu den (metanarrativen) Missionsgeschichten eine alternative Perspektive auf die weltweite Mission der Herrnhuter und zum anderen stellen sie ein Korrektiv für das eurozentrisch geprägte Geschichtsbild im nachnapoleonischen Zeitalter dar. Mit der (Wieder-)Veröffentlichung eines kleinen Teils dieser Nachrichten von den Rändern der damals bekannten Welt ist das Anliegen verbunden, diese Texte auch als Quellen einer ‚(Sprach-)Geschichte von unten’ erneut zu aktivieren: Da die Herrnhuter Missionare das Leben nach herrnhutischem Vorbild als Modell in kulturell alternativ geprägte Lebensräume einbringen und ihre Beobachtungen des Kontakts einander fremder Kulturen verschriftlichen und nach Europa senden, wird in den Texten die Etablierung kultureller Räume thematisiert. Die kommentierten und neu gesetzten Texte sind systematisch nach Missionsgebieten geordnet; kurze Einleitungen zu den jeweiligen Missionsfeldern stellen die übergeordneten historischen Zusammenhänge her und kartographische Darstellungen erleichtern die Orientierung. Kurze Einführungen in die Geschichte der Brüdergemeine und in die Missionstheologie der Gemeinschaft geben darüber hinaus einen Einblick in die kontextuelle und institutionelle Rahmung der Missionsnachrichten.

The work deals with the valuation of a holiday cottage according to the previous valuation regulations and subsequently according to the present valuation regulation. In the chapters deal with individual valuation periods, description of a specific holiday cottage, valuation of the land, description of the locality. Easements are also part of the work. Valuation of a holiday cottage is done through practice expert’s reports drawn up for the second, third and present valuation periods. In the annex are available documents related to legal and construction developments of holiday cottage.

This Master´s thesis is focused on Multi-machine efficiency in specific chosen production company With using company´s data to determine how it is reflected in the costs and how this fact affects in standartization and labor costs. By using analysis of current state of multi-machine operation and costs.

[pt] Este trabalho tem como objetivo inicial aproximar o conteúdo bibliográfico da disciplina proxemia às aulas do curso de design de produtos da PUC-Rio, relacionando os principais autores que trataram do tema até o momento. Através dessa pesquisa, associar e resgatar a utilização de um procedimento de escrita literária do autor Raymond Roussel à disciplina. Por meio das similitudes dos temas, foi realizado um exercício empírico com embasamento teórico no ganho de conhecimento através do campo prático durante as aulas para os alunos. O objetivo final é a análise da recuperação de pequenos relatos de objetos cotidianos na vivência dos alunos em sua cidade através do ensino da disciplina proxemia. / [en] This work has as its first goal to develop an approach to the bibliographic content of proxemics subject to the classes of product design at PUC-Rio, relating the main authors that dealed with the issue until nowadays. Through this research, seek to associate and rescue Raymond Roussel s writings procedures to the subject. Exploiting the similarities of the topics, an empirical exercise was conducted with theoretical support to achieve a deeper knowledge through the practical field during classes for students. The final goal is the analysis of the recovery of small reports of daily objects in student s everyday experience in their city through proxemics discipline.

Sustainability assurance is on the uprising. Nowadays, more and more companies are thinking about sustainability which resulted in a growing market for sustainability assurance. The global reporting initiative (2013, p.6) defines sustainability assurance as “the use of external, independent reviews of sustainability management processes and final disclosures is intended to increase the robustness, accuracy and trustworthiness of disclosed information.”. Unlike financial auditing, sustainability assurance ismostly unregulated and there are various guidelines and frameworks issued to help the assurance provider. The lack of mandatory regulations has resulted in a fragmented assurance environment where different approaches is used by different assurance providers. This in turn has contributed to the sustainability assurance process being unknown. The uncertainty around sustainability assurance affect the usersof the assurance report, for example stakeholders’, which can find it difficult to identify, interpretand compare the results of the sustainability assurance.The purpose of this study is to contribute to the limited knowledge on sustainability assurance, by investigating the sustainability assurance from both auditors’ and non-auditors’ perspectives.To assist in fulfilling the purpose, four main themes were developed; assurance team, assurance process, assurance report and the future of sustainability assurance. To fulfill the purpose of this study, the research questions are;“What is the audit process of sustainability reports?”“What does the sustainability assurance team look like?”“What does the sustainability assurance report look like?”The result in this study suggests that the process of sustainability assurance looks different depending on the assurance provider. The findings also suggest that the assurance team almost looks the same, regardless who is the assurance provider. When it comes to the results regarding the assurance report, it is evident that there are many ways to improve theusefulness and informativeness of the report. Furthermore, the findings of this study contribute to the limited knowledge of sustainability assurance by thoroughly exploring the assurance process.

Our planet suffers from severe climate change and environmental issues has never been as important as it is now. Countries and communities come together to get involved in environmental questions and to work against a sustainable future. Companies are also expected to take act on this concern and incorporate sustainability into their business practices. To account for this, company’s disclosure a sustainability report and the numbers of companies that do so has increased rapidly the last years. From 2011 to 2013 there was almost a 50% increase of submitted sustainability reports. Since then, sustainability reporting has gone from optional to mandatory as a new law came into place in 2016. However, as companies start to disclosure sustainability reports more than ever before, new issues have arisen. The lack of regulation means that there is no guarantee for quality in the report and studies has shown that the stakeholders demand higher quality and more transparency of the sustainability report. Thus, it could be of importance for companies to produce reports of better quality in order to meet the demands of their stakeholders. Retaining a good relationship is crucial and it affects the growth of the company as it affects competitive advantage and the possibility to manage risks. Previous literature has found evidence that stakeholder pressure has influence on the transparency, which has similarities to quality, of the sustainability reports globally. With this thesis we aim to contribute with additional information to existing literature with a new geographical area, Sweden. We also aim to contribute to understanding of how quality of the sustainability reports can be determined. The critical assessment of the sustainability reports from each stakeholder becomes more important and previous literature has shown that different stakeholders have different effect on transparency in the sustainability reports. First and foremost, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate if the pressure from different stakeholder groups has an effect on the quality of the sustainability report. We intend to do so with the following research question: Does stakeholder pressure have an effect on the quality of sustainability reports? The companies will be split into four different groups based on the industry the company operates within and the sub-purpose is to see if there is any difference in the impact on the quality of the sustainability reports between the different groups. The quality will be determined by adherence level to the GRI G4 framework, how many other standards and guidelines the report is in compliance with and the existence of external assurance. The population is the 127 companies who has their reports available in the GRI database. We have conducted a quantitative study using a linear regression analysis on those 127 companies. The results led us to the conclusion that the relationship between stakeholder pressure and the quality of the sustainability reports cannot be explained by the model used in this thesis. A two-sample t test was conducted for each group of industry to see if there was any difference of the mean of quality if the companies was represented in the industry or not. The results showed us that the mean of the quality was higher for the companies operating in an environmentally sensitive industry.